WEBVTT

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It's really a rare
pleasure and a privilege

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when a student has
the opportunity

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to thank in public writers
for whom I have such respect

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and gratitude because
of the service

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that they have done me
over these many years.

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So I'm really grateful to
the College of Humanities

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for providing me the
opportunity to do that.

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I first met Clark Blaise at
the Iowa Writers' Workshop

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where I was a student
in the early 1980s,

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and Bharati came
in, I believe once,

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that semester just
to say hello, so I

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can claim to have known
Bharati as long as well,

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and over the years, I've been
astonished by the commitment

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that they have been able
to maintain simultaneously.

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They're part of that
rare breed of writers

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who are able to
maintain simultaneously

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a commitment to their own
work, and a completely

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selfless commitment
to their students,

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both past and present, and I'm
enormously grateful for that.

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I'll tell you a little bit
about their qualifications.

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I'll summarize them.

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There's no way that I could
go through the whole list,

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and then I'll say a bit about
my impressions of their work.

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Beginning with A North
American Education,

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Clark Blaise has
published collections

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of short stories, novels,
and works of nonfiction,

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culminating in my personal
works of nonfiction--

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I Had a Father: A Postmodern
Autobiography, recently

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reissued by the University
of Iowa Press, and one

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of my favorite
memoirs, and Time Lord:

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Sir Sandford Fleming
and the Creation

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of Standard Time,
published in 2001,

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and recipient of Canada's
prestigious Pearson Award.

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Porcupine's Quill
Press in Canada

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has undertaken to
publish three volumes

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of his new and selected
stories, of which I

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had the honor of introducing the
first volume, Southern Stories.

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He's currently on the creative
writing faculty of Long Island

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University at Southampton.

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Bharati Mukherjee is a
distinguished professor

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of English at the University
of California at Berkeley,

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and has published six
novels and two collections

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of short stories of which the
Middle Man and other stories

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received the National Book
Critics Circle Award--

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possibly, our most
distinguished literary prize.

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Both Clark and Bharati have
distinguished teaching records

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having served on the faculties
of the nation's leading

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creative writing programs.

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They write of the paradoxes
and contradictions

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that accompany all borders,
external or internal--

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a subject that arises from
their personal histories.

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Clark was born in
Fargo, North Dakota

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of a French-Canadian father
who anglicized his name

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to become a US citizen,
and moved to Florida.

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Bharati was born and
raised in Bengal,

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immigrated to Canada, and
then to the United States.

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The great religious
historian Mercea Eliade

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describes how
Judeo-Christian civilization

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invented linear time.

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Earlier cultures
envisioned time as a circle

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or a spiral or sphere in
which history endlessly

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repeated itself.

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Then the late Jewish prophets
initiated the conception

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of a linear, chronological
progress toward apocalypse--

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the end of time, after which
the saved and the damned

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would dwell in some eternal
place, a place outside of time.

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Probably because of his
status as an outsider,

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Clark Blaise seems always to
have resided in and written

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from non-linear time.

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His round, seamless narrative
share more with the southerner

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Eudora Welty or the
Canadian Alice Munro

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than with the ideal of rising
action, climax denouement.

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His fictions circle
back on themselves.

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They dwell not in chronological,
but in circular time.

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The time not of the
railroad engineer,

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but of the priest and the poet.

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Clark's writing
was postmodern well

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before the term
came into vogue--

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so postmodern, it's pre-modern.

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Evoking the roots
of Western fiction

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in Smollett,
Richardson, and Stern.

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To read his work is to journey
into the synapses of memory,

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to understand how its flawed
and warped mirror is reality,

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how we construct identities
that are not so much

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whole and distinct
as shifting images

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in an ongoing
ever-changing collage.

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Time and its machinations
forms a sub-theme

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of Bharati Mukherjee's
most recent book, Desirable

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Daughters, which is
just out in paperback.

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By the way, the books
will be available

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and are available in the
lobby, and both authors

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will be happy to sign
copies afterwards.

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The novel's narrator
writes, "Time

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moves in cycles when
it belongs to the gods,

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and in straight lines when
it belongs to the mortals."

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In all her works Bharati
explores the dramatic tension

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between these two very different
ways of seeing and being

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in the world--

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circular and linear.

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In Desirable Daughters,
the protagonist gay son

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becomes one of the
heroes, exactly

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because his status
as a double outsider,

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both immigrant to America
and sexual outlaw,

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gives him a
particularly rich place

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from which to perceive history
as well as to shape the future.

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His heroism however,
has its foundation

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in an ancient, non-Western
understanding of the world,

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as his wise grandmother makes
clear at the book's end.

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"You don't have to go
outside yourself to find God.

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You must first value
yourself," she says.

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"We all embrace
the goddess gaily.

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Gay is the secret word."

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Bharati is drawn
on her experience

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as an outsider to become one
of the few non-gay American

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authors to create a successful
integrated gay character.

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An achievement
that speaks volumes

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about her breadth of vision
and largeness of heart.

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The New York Times Book Review
called Bharati Mukherjee

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the literary mother of young
Indian writers now flourishing

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in the West.

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It's no exaggeration to say that
Bharati blazed the publishing

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trail for those writers
of the subcontinent.

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Now, we find them in every
literary magazine and forum,

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but it's important to remember
that when Bharati attended

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the Iowa Workshop
in the early 1960s,

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the notion of a Bengali woman
becoming a force in world

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publishing was inconceivable.

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Like all leaps forward,
this one required someone

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to have the courage
to live it out,

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and in doing so to
demonstrate, that it was not

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only possible, but essential.

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I want to say a word about
the remarkable collaboration

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that Clark and Bharati have
sustained across the decade,

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since their meeting
at the Iowa Writers'

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Workshop in the early 1960s.

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Writing in all forms of
fiction and non-fiction,

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they have co-authored
books and numerous articles

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along with raising two sons.

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As citizens of the West,
they write from a place

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where spirit and flesh
are separate and distinct.

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As citizens of India,
they write from a place

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where spirit and
flesh are seamless.

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"Geography is
destiny," Clark writes,

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and in their
East-West existence,

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they are the living embodiment
of our national geography

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from which so much creative
endeavor has arisen.

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Our East Coast faces
across the Atlantic

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toward our European
roots in the old world,

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while our West Coast
faces across the Pacific

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toward Asia and the older world.

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For more than 20
years, I've turned

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to the writings of Clark
Blaise and Bharati Mukherjee

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as I might hire an
interpreter in a foreign land,

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someone to help me understand
my own borderlands--

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the rich and scary places
where I am brought up against,

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the shifting construction
of identities I call myself.

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Clark and Bharati are both out
my America and apart from it--

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Clark as a once Canadian
and US citizen, Yankee,

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and southerner.

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Bharati as a once Bengali and
US citizen of the Commonwealth,

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and interloper in it.

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They are one and the same
time natives and exiles.

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They were global citizens
before we invented the phrase

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to describe the condition.

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In their different
ways, they write

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of our entry into and
resistance to globalization

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from the most peculiar and
fascinating perspective--

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the outsider's timeless
time, the immigrant's

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placeless place.

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So it's with a great
deal of pleasure

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that I introduce my friends
and mentors, Clark Blaise

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and Bharati Mukherjee.

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[APPLAUSE]